Real-time payments API: How to embed a solution with Modulr

Modulr By Modulr on 19 December 2023   •   11 mins read

If you’re looking for a real-time payments API for your platform or software, you’re likely doing so because:

  • Clients have to leave your platform to make payments, leading to customer dissatisfaction and churn.  

  • You already offer payments in connection with your product or services, but you lack visibility on payment status and settlement.

  • You want to offer a wide range of payment options to enable faster collection, but some methods have long settlement times, such as direct debit and cards, which can impact  cash flow for you and your customers.

We spoke with our payments expert Joe Boot to understand more about the power of embedding real-time payments into your software. In this blog post, we’ll cover:

Modulr is a leading provider of embedded real-time payment solutions. Contact us today to learn more about how our API can transform the way your platform or software handles payments.

Which industries can benefit most from a real-time payments API?

Several industries can improve their product and competitiveness through embedded real-time payments. At Modulr, these are some sectors we see as having the most potential from this technology.

  • Accounting and payroll. Software platforms helping companies calculate their accounts payable and payroll liabilities can improve their offering by embedding real-time payments. Instead of having to leave the platform, customers can process and reconcile payments from directly within the software. This embedded connectivity reduces errors and processing times, while also opening up additional revenue streams.

  • Merchant payment services. Companies helping merchants collect payments can use a real-time payments API to shorten settlement times. Merchants can receive funds right after a sale instead of waiting days, improving their cash flow.

  • Earned wage access. Platforms helping workers access their earned wage before payday can use a real-time payment API to enhance their value proposition. Workers can receive their wages directly in their bank account as soon as they make a request for payment, regardless of the time of day.

  • Lending. A real-time payments API enables lenders to credit borrowers as soon as they’re approved for a loan. This ability to provide truly instant credit allows the lending platform to help its customers with liquidity needs, increasing customer satisfaction and earning trust. Lenders can also offer their customers instant payments to facilitate the loan repayment process.

  • Anyone who wants to add or improve the payments experience right on their platform. Nearly any business with real-time payment needs stands to benefit with a payment API. We’ve seen successful use cases from SaaS tools and travel companies to marketplaces and beyond. If there’s a need to accelerate the payment experience, there’s a good chance Modulr’s API can fix it.

Are you ready to make payments on your platform instant and embedded? Reach out to us now to see how we can work together.

How to add a real-time payments API to your platform with Modulr

Since 2015, we’ve been enabling companies like yours to embed payment technology directly into your platform. With our API, you and your customers can pay in real time without having to leave your website or software. In turn, you’re able to make payments part of your products and revenue streams.

Here’s how you can send payments in real time directly from your platform with Modulr.

  • Sign up with Modulr. The first step to adding a real-time payments API to your platform is to contact us. We will schedule a meeting to discuss your specific needs and how we can work together to make it happen.

  • Get a dedicated team of experts to help you design the real-time payments experience your platform deserves. Once you sign up with Modulr, you'll get a dedicated team of experts who will help you understand our products and develop a real-time payment solution using our API. In the meantime, your developers can access our sandbox, read our docs and get familiar with what our technology can do.

  • Deploy your embedded payment solution quickly and compliantly. Our goal is to get to market with your payment solution as fast as possible while staying compliant. With our support, Modulr customers often get their real-time payment solution up and running in just a couple of months.

  • Future-proof your payment infrastructure. We regularly develop new features and products so you can innovate and iterate without worrying about your payment configuration keeping up. Our embedded payment products are modular, which lets you add or remove features whenever you need to. 

Why use Modulr's API for real-time payments

Here’s why customers like kennek, Sage and Hastee choose us for their real-time payment needs.

Offer real-time payments right from your platform with our API

For software industries such as accounting and payroll, it’s common for customers to leave your platform to process payments. However, this creates friction and can increase abandonment or even churn rates. With Modulr, you can strengthen your value proposition and customer experience by embedding our real-time payment solution into your platform or software.

When your customer is ready to pay, they can submit their payment through your platform, which will process the transaction immediately thanks to Modulr's embedded technology. You'll receive a notification via our API as soon as the payment settles so you can update your system, records, and end customers. Our payment platform runs 24/7 and has a 99.99% uptime, so you won’t have to worry about waiting for a payment window to open to process payments.

Our real-time payments API solves a major customer pain point and makes your platform stickier, while also enabling new revenue streams. For example, an accounts payable calculation software company uses our API to embed payment capabilities into their product. Customers can complete their payments right away in the software without having to open their banking app. For a small fee, customers save time and avoid the risks associated with manual input and reconciliation, keeping them loyal and coming back.

Make payments through the fastest payment infrastructure in Europe

Some payment platforms might let you submit a payment instantly, but will only process it hours or even a day later. That’s not the case with Modulr. We participate in the fastest payment schemes in Europe so our customers can, too. We support the following fast payment methods:

  • Faster Payments in the UK where we’re a direct settling participant. With Faster Payments you can submit and settle a payment within 90 seconds 24/7.

  • SEPA Instant Credit Transfer for European transfers. SEPA Instant lets you send and receive funds anywhere within the European Economic Area in under ten seconds.*

Our payment ecosystem doesn’t wait until there’s a minimum amount of transactions pending before sending them to the payment scheme. Instead, we send each payment request immediately as you, your partner or your customer submits it. You’ll know as soon as payment settles thanks to our API’s webhook functionality and connection to the schemes.  

Financial wellbeing app Wagestream uses our real time payments API to provide on-demand salary payment for frontline workers. Whenever a worker requests their earned salary through the platform, Wagestream can release the funds instantly via our API. Our system processes the payment immediately, getting earnings into the workers’ pocket in under a minute and a half, regardless if it’s 8 am on a Tuesday or 10 pm on a Saturday night.

* SEPA instant can settle in as little as 10 seconds only if the receiving bank participates in the scheme. If not, payments need to go out by 2pm to ensure a fast delivery of 2 days via SEPA Credit.

Receive payments in real time with access to fast payment schemes

In card-driven industries, such as marketplaces, e-commerce and merchant payment services, there’s a lag between when a customer makes a card payment and when the merchant receives funds. This delay can cause liquidity problems for merchants as they need to wait multiple days for card processing to complete. You can bypass those delays by collecting via our real-time payments (Faster Payments and SEPA Instant) and managing them instantly via our virtual payment accounts.

We're a regulated electronic money institution that lets you create dedicated payment accounts with IBANs, sort codes, and account numbers for each customer, supplier or merchant via our API. Together with our connectivity to fast payment schemes, your merchants can move funds immediately to external accounts. Once the payment settles in your merchant’s account held at Modulr, they can credit themselves or their suppliers (or both) that instant to improve their cash flows. Alternatively, merchants can choose to hold funds in their Modulr accounts and payout to external accounts at a later date.

Our real time payment and accounts features let you deliver solutions your customers are asking for, while also creating new revenue for your business.

Liberis, a business finance platform that helps small and medium-sized merchants improve their cash flow with revenue financing, needed help with their reconciliation process. With Modulr’s embedded payment infrastructure, Liberis created a dedicated account for each merchant where they could collect loan repayments automatically. Loan collections now settle instantly and reconcile automatically, reducing the company’s overhead costs by 35%.

Are your merchants looking for even shorter payment times? Issue virtual cards linked to their accounts so they pay for business expenses without needing to do a bank transfer first.

Gain visibility and control with our API rules and webhooks

Frustration abounds for customers, partners and operations teams alike if you currently offer different payments types but don’t have any visibility over settlements or control over how you manage your funds. Modulr's API solves this problem with a robust webhook notification system that sends you payment activity notifications as soon as they happen. Whenever an inbound or outbound payment settles, you'll know about it immediately. With our webhooks you can:

  • Update partners and customers on their payment activities.

  • Automatically reconcile transactions.

Our payment rules can also help you fulfil your product vision and business model. You can use payment rules to automate complex payment processes, such as splitting funds to payout multiple parties or sweeping funds into another account.

For example, a crowdlending platform can use our payment API rules and webhooks to automate the reimbursement process. The borrower receives a dedicated account for loan repayment. Whenever they make a repayment, our system notifies the platform and automatically splits the funds between the different lenders and the platform's commission, without any manual intervention required.

Access additional payment tools for a complete real-time payment solution

Your tech team and finance department want to keep overhead to a minimum. Instead of sourcing separate service providers for each step in your payments process, you can access an entire suite of embedded payment solutions with Modulr, including:

Our modular building blocks enable you to offer a complete payment experience within your dashboard or software. Since they're all accessible through our API, you can develop, deploy, or even remove them with just a few lines of code. Pick and choose the blocks you need to build your ideal payments infrastructure.

How a C2B marketplace uses Modulr to increase turnover

A growing UK C2B marketplace integrated with Modulr’s embedded technology to provide instant, real-time payments to facilitate transactions between retail sellers and commercial buyers.

Prior to this integration, the settlement could take hours, leaving both parties standing around awkwardly, awaiting payment. Now, the payment clears within 90 seconds, allowing buyers to complete more transactions and giving sellers an improved real-time experience.

Embed your real-time payments API with Modulr

It’s clear now that on-platform real time payments can transform your customer experience, create new revenue streams and give you the competitive advantage you’re searching for. Our real time payments API and other embedded payment solutions deliver all those benefits and more.

Contact us now to start the real time payments transformation you’ve been looking for.